A Time to Heal

Turmoil

This week, news broke of a volcano on a small island just off New Zealand which erupted. The island was being visited at the time by some tourists who were doing a tour from a cruise ship that had left Sydney days before. Over a dozen lives lost.

Closer to home, bush fires continue to rage - a constant over the last two or so months. We’re quickly getting used to seeing the sky with one big haze as bush fire smoke engulfs us.

Christmas is looming, but we’re constantly being reminded that the world we live in is full of trouble.

As we watch the news, it’s clear that something is just not right. And at times it can be hard to know what to make of it all.

Even as Christians it is hard to know what to make of it. We have some sections claiming that we’re witnessing God’s divine judgement for wickedness.

In other sections we have the finger firmly pointed at the big polluters and the effect that is having on the environment.

We could argue how this all fits together, but in the end, once all the voices are heard, it would seem that what we end up with… is confusion.

Well, if you’re confused by the state of the world - join the club. It’s a club with a very long history.

In fact, you could say that from the time the devil visited Adam and Eve and started speaking half truths, we’ve been confused ever since.

Just look at the whole book of Job - it starts with a series of traumatic events, and then the remainder of the book is a bunch of friends becoming increasingly confused as they try to make sense of it.

Interestingly, that book culminates with words from God - word that help us to re-focus.

You see, this is the amazing thing about the Bible. We get a picture of a chaotic world, but out of this chaos comes God’s word - and from God’s word, the picture starts to make more sense.

John the Baptist

Now last week, during the family service, I briefly introduced a new character into the conversation, namely John the Baptist.

Last week I considered the aspect of how John the Baptist prepared the way for us as we come before Jesus.

But now here is the thing. John stated things quite clearly during this period of early preparation. He recognised the special place Jesus had.

But then we come to Matthew 11 and John is asking questions. In fact you could say that he was confused.

Context

Now we need to understand a little bit of the context. We’re informed at the start of verse 2 that John has found himself in prison. At this point in Matthew’s Gospel, he doesn’t elaborate on the circumstances of John’s imprisonment, but he does tell us more a few chapters later. If you went to Matthew 14, you would read how John the Baptist got on the bad side of Herod because John didn’t keep quiet about his questionable relationship.

So Herod had him locked up, but didn’t kill him because he was afraid of the people. That changed however, when Herodias, a women central to the whole affair, had her daughter dance before Herod, which pleased him to the point he offered her whatever she wanted, to which she requested the head of John the Baptist. John’s bad situation comes to a very bad end.

But back in chapter 11, John is still alive and just sitting in his cell in less than ideal circumstances.

So imagine you are John...

It starts with a high.

You had previously felt God speaking to you and felt compelled to speak these words of truth, pointing people to the coming work of Jesus - the man who is soon to be recognised as the Christ.

You are asked to Baptize him, which you feel completely unqualified to do, but you do anyway, and what you witness is something different to all other baptisms. Indeed, as Jesus comes out of the water a voice from heaven is heard - and you witness the spirit descending on him like a dove.

It was all so amazing - and you knew what it meant because you understood the prophets. He was the one to come and redeem God’s people. To bring them out of their current situation and God’s glory will be known.

And so there you are - quite possibly giddy with anticipation.

And so you watch as Jesus goes about his ministry.

But then as time goes on, you start to notice something strange. While something is certainly happening around Jesus, the Jewish people are not being released from the iron clamp that Rome has on them. In fact if anything, Rome seems to be tightening their grip.

Wasn’t the messiah meant to bring freedom?

And on top of that, you end up in prison.

It is no surprise then, that John the Baptist would be feeling somewhat confused sitting in his cell - who is Jesus? Perhaps there is someone to come after him?

Our confusion

I don’t think it is too different to our own confusion.

At that time when we were saved… when we made that commitment. We felt this sense of burdens being lifted off us. Often people describe the feeling as if there has literally been a weight lifted off their shoulders. And so we get this great optimism. God is with us, so who can be against us?

But after our conversion experience, life goes on but that initial lift doesn’t seem to hold. We get dragged back down. And so we try to make sense of it only to be left with confusion.

One solution

Well, our rational brains can offer one solution - don’t worry, hold tight. Jesus will come back and all things will be made right.

In one sense, this can be very comforting because we know that for all the trouble we face in this age, we are going to experience blessings beyond our wildest dreams in the next.

While this is very true, we can be left with a disatisfying taste while we sit in our misery and confusion. There has to be more.

You see, while Jesus certainly does point to a new future where there is no more pain or tears, if you pay attention, you’ll see that the blessing starts now.

Jesus

So, we’ve got John the Baptist sending some of his disciples to Jesus trying to make sense of it all. So the best thing for us to do is to look at how Jesus respond to them, because as we do, we’ll start to get a better perspective on this.

So let’s look at verse 4 of chapter 11. Jesus tells John’s disciples to go back to him with an important message.

Verse 5: “the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor”.

A new perspective

Essentially Jesus is telling John to take another look, because he’s thinking in the wrong categories.

He’s thinking that the messiah is going to bring peace, but he is thinking of peace in very black and white terms. In other words, like other Jews, he seems to be expecting a political messiah. And once this peace comes, they will finally find the rest - essentially the Sabbath rest that they have been longing for.

And it’s not surprising that he thinks this way. Many of the Old Testament prophets talk about the peace that will come.

What Jesus says however in quoting a particular prophecy is: don’t think that we need the political power before we can experience the blessings of God. Rather, the blessings that you will experience when all is fulfilled - well, they start now!

It’s almost as if Jesus is reversing the order that everyone expected things to happen. He brings the blessings about before his fully consummated reign begins - the reign that we will see when he returns.

And this is the most remarkable thing about the first time Jesus came - we saw the kingdom of God break into the kingdom of the world.

Isaiah 35

So let’s look a little bit close at the actual prophecy that Jesus refers to.

Jesus quotes from the book of Isaiah - and of all the prophets, I would have to say this was one of the most remarkable.

You see, one of the interesting things about Isaiah is that it masterfully weaves together a prophetic judgement on the people it was originally written to, with a longer term view of what God is doing with his people.

As you go through the book, you’ll find times when Isaiah is directly addressing things that are happening to him at the time - such as some of the big political conflicts that were going on.

But then at other times, he’ll describe a picture of the coming messiah and also for what we now know as the second coming.

The problem is that he moves between these pictures often quite quickly. In fact, at times essentially describing more than one picture at a time. In other words, he’ll address a specific situation they were facing, but this ultimately points us also to Jesus.

Now the beauty of this is that we can endlessly study this and we’ll explore more and more depth to it. But it does mean on quick glances at it, we’ll often miss what God is saying here.

So when we come to Isaiah 35, we need to keep this in mind because, particularly for the initial reader, it would not have been clear what sort of time frame was in mind when the things mentioned would take place.

In very general terms, it describes the hope that there is when things are as they should be.

A time with no seeing or hearing

In fact, it comes in stark contrast to the time in which Isaiah is ministering.

We get a picture of what the time was like in Isaiah’s time when he describes his commissioning in chapter 6. In this chapter, we get this amazing picture of God appearing before Isaiah, and Isaiah accepts the call to speak the message to the people.

But then as God essentially commissions him for the task, he says something quite strange. He tells them to tell the people: “Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving. Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes.”

You see, there is a sense in which the people in Isaiah’s time were condemned to not understand because of their sinfulness.

But a time was coming when that was going to change, and that is what Isaiah 35 describes.

You see, these eyes that don’t see, will be opened. The ears that are deaf, will start to hear. The calloused heart are going to be replaced with great joy - with the lame leaping like a deer.

Now we need to remember that because of the free flowing nature of Isaiah’s prophecy, it is sometimes hard to figure out exactly the sequence that this will all take place. And so, for this reason, it was easy for the Jews living in the time just before Jesus to get things a little out of order.

And so you could imagine that Isaiah 35 could easily be seen as describing the time after the messiah had come including the political peace.

But this is the remarkable thing Jesus does.

He applies this passage, not to the final consummation of all things, but to the time that he is inaugurating.

The miracles

Now this is where the miracles of Jesus becomes really important. You see, the miracles of Jesus were more than just a few party tricks to get the attention of people. Rather the miracles Jesus performed had deep significance.

And Jesus uses this prophecy from Isaiah 35 to link the miracles he is doing to this new age when things are changing.

Jesus literally opened the eyes of the blind. He literally made people hear.

He made the lame walk.

And as he literally did this, there is a very real sense in which he opened the spiritual eyes, and the spiritual ears so that God’s people could see and hear the spiritual realities of this world.

These miracles were an indication that God’s kingdom were breaking into this world.

Our new perspective

And this brings me to the main point that I want to make today.

You see, as we become confused with the world around us. As we try to make sense of it - what we really need to do is open our eyes to what Jesus is doing right now.

Sure we can think of the realities that are to come - but there is something more than that - God is right here, right now and he wants to make a difference now!

The truth is, when we take the time to look, we can actually see that this is true.

We too often fail to see it, because we get so caught up in everything that we don’t see what God is doing now.

That’s why it is so important that we take time out of our busy world. We need to stop, and reflect on what God is doing.

For myself, I find I get lots of different responsibilities during the week. It seems quite often that I get clashes in my calendar from different areas and sometimes I worry how I’m going to get everything done.

But almost every week, I get to the end of the week and I look back, and I see how everything has just fallen together. It is then that I can see how God has orchestrated everything.

Now of course that is quite a simple example, but it illustrates how when we slow down, we can see God working.

Miracles today

In our Tuesday night bible study group, this term we’ve been looking at various miracles that Jesus performed. However, last week, we took a week to look more specifically at the miracles that Jesus is performing in our world today.

We allowed various members of the group to share their own experiences.

What is very evident is just how much God is working. He works in the big miracles, like healing cancer in such a way that baffles the medical experts, and also the little ways like putting the right words in our mouth at the right time.

What this demonstrates is that we don’t have to wait until Jesus comes again before we experience his blessings. We can experience them now.

One of the great things about being a pastor is that I get the opportunity to sit down with various people and hear a bit about what is going on in their life.

The strange thing is, you might think as Pastor it might be my job to be this comforting figure. However what I usually find is that as I listen to the various stories, it becomes evident that God is already working in their lives. Sometimes they may not see it and I can help to show how God is working. Other times they are already well aware of it. But what then happens is that I usually end up going away feeling greatly encouraged myself. Because I see that Jesus is alive and active.

Conclusion

As we look at the world around us and all the suffering that it faces, rather than getting confused, allow yourself the time to see that God isn’t causing this mess - rather God is actively working right now to make things better.

This doesn’t mean bad things won’t happen. Indeed we know they will. But since that time when Jesus came 2000 odd years ago, things have changed. God is doing something special.

Now is the time to be healed.

As we come into this Christmas period and we have an opportunity to speak more boldly about Jesus, one of the messages we need to be giving is that God wants to be with you.

Jesus came to make a difference to this hurting world.

As God’s church, we need to also be actively involved in being Christs hands and feet in this world. And that means that we too need to be partnering with Jesus in healing this hurting world.

As we come to this third week in advent, a focus shifts from thinking about what it means for Jesus to come a second time, to seeing what it means that Jesus has already come. Because when Jesus came the first time, it made a world of difference - a difference that we can experience today.

And for this reason, we can sing for joy, even in the midst of suffering.

Let me pray...